


Iron and Wine, Blood and Bone

by JohnlockAndATardis



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Ancient magic, Coralee Strand is a Vampire, Dude your wife is a vampire get with the picture, F/F, F/M, Mostly SmutSome Gore, Rated M for Smut and Gore in Future Chapters, Still Skeptic!Strand, Vampires, also, gay vampires - Freeform, we are running off the rule that Alex is attracted to everyone and vice-versa
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-11-15 10:43:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11229300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnlockAndATardis/pseuds/JohnlockAndATardis
Summary: Coralee Strand can smell mystery on the girl, feel the fire in her bones.





	1. Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A demon wanders into a church and stumbles upon a woman with the face of an angel.

     "We shouldn't be out here," Victoria whispers. She is eight years old, her wide brown eyes looking into those of Hariet, all pretty and grey against the older girl's brown skin. The wind is cold as it stirs the air, and Victoria shivers, wrapping herself into her shawl. Harriet just grins, puts her arms around Victoria and guides her deeper still, into the woods.

     "Don't be such a baby, Torrie," the other girl chides. The so-named girl pouts, sticks her chin out because she is most definitely _not_ a baby. Babies are stupid and cry and drool and whine, and Torrie does none of those things. Just to prove it, she wriggles her way from Harriet's arms and stomps out ahead, leaving the other girl to chase after her.

     "Torrie!" Harriet's wind-chime voice sings out, laughter cutting easily through the stirring night air. "Victoria, wait up!" She rushes over the leaves and past a gnarled root, pulls Victoria's hand into her own and giggles. "I was only picking fun."

     "I'm not a baby. I'm eight and three-quarters, and mama says I'm almost all grown up now," she informs the other sternly. Harriet examines her through thick lashes that make her eyes look, to Victoria at least, dark and black and very scary. Harriet nods gravely, deep in consideration.

     "You'll be an adult soon I 'spect, and then everyone will have to go to you to do anything. If you get past the Ceremony, of course."

     "Etta," Victoria whines in annoyance, pushing the other girl lightly in the physical language of children. "Don't tease. Everyone knows that's not real."

     "Sure it is. My sister had to go through it," Harriet defends. Victoria rolled her eyes, pushing on ahead again. This time, the older girl hangs back a bit, letting her friend take the pace. She's quiet for a bit, that sort of quiet which is marked with consideration, until she picks up her speed again.

     "We're almost here," she informs Victoria.

     "Where's here?"

     "The place where the witch lady lives, silly. She'll read you a fortune for a penny, isn't that great?"

     Victoria didn't think it was great. "Mama says we shouldn't be messing in these woods. She says that the witch sold her soul to the devil for those powers, and that she gives birth to demons!"

     Harriet laughed. "Scaredy cat."

     "Am not!"

     "Victoria O'Riagain , you are the scaredest little girl I have ever met." Harriet looped once more their arms together. "Come on now, I'll show you there's nothing to fear."

     Apprehensive but unwilling to be chided as a child again, Victoria would press on after her friend. The terrain grew thicker the further they went, until they were pushing aside heavy branches and shoving their way over ground more root than earth. Darkness was broke not even by the moon, the cold air assaulting her lungs and making her breath steam from a cauldron, a silent spell claiming the land such that none of God's creation would dare come this far. And yet they did, continuing to walk until that darkness fell to an eerie green light passing through dirty glass windows. A cabin, made of all the strange and rotted trees of this wrought forest, protruded before the mouth of some awful cave which seemed to sigh out as they passed. There was no noise, no chirping of birds, no awful buzzing of flies, not even mosquitoes dared pass this way, too fearful of the poison of those who dwelled here. No, the only natural and earthly sound came in the sudden cawing of a crow, which seemed to her like a child's fretful cries. Victoria jumped, clutched at Harriet for protection.

     "Oh Etta, let us turn back! Mama will be in for an awful fright if she wakes to see me gone, she'll beat me blue!"

     For once, Harriet seemed to consider her words. Here in this strange little clearing so far from their village, it was not hard to find herself spooked. She had opened her mouth, was turning her back to lead Victoria away, when a long and low creek shattered her agreement. Victoria groaned, tugged at Etta's sleeve as the other girl gave pause. But it was no use, for a voice broke into the night.

     "Come," it whispered like parchment against parchment, dried and cracked with age and disuse. "Come to me."

     "Etta, no."

     As though under a spell, Harriet obeyed the voice and only it. Victoria watched, helpless, as her friend went further, back towards the voice. She grabbed the other's cloak, pulled at it and strained to draw her friend back, but found her efforts without use. "Harriet!" Victoria cried. Her friend did not hear, would only follow the voice. To the opened cottage door she went, and Torrie ran to her side to draw her back, but before her hand could reach out a burst of vivid green wind swept through her, knocking her to her back. She cried out in despair as the cottage door slammed shut, hurrying to her feet in an attempt to rip the door open. But before she could even reach it, a great rumbling came. The earth itself broke open, swallowing whole that ungodly structure and carrying it to hell once more.

     Victoria turned then and ran. She did not stop until she had found her way back to her town, to the church at its center. Never did she speak of the events that occurred that night.

 

  
\- **One Hundred Fifty Years Later**

 

     She first saw Alexandra Reagan's visage in the archives of the church established on the grounds of a very old Canadian college.

     It was midwinter, dreary gray skies and snow upon the ground stiffened to an icy status. Coralee had entered the house of worship in the dimming hours past sunlight, in possession of a great personal intrigue. It had given her a thrill, in the days since she had accepted what she was, to step into such a religious hall and feel herself laden with the irony of the situation. She was, by all accounts, a monster, condemned to darkness and to shadow. In this the lore held true. But in religious imagery there could be -would be- found no harm. She could clasp a crucifix to her breast or bathe in holy water, and it would do her less harm than mud within a puddle.

     There was something delicious about the sacrilege.

     She was under cover of that gloomy night sky, the moonbeams filtering in through windows to meet the fluorescent lighting of the modern era. Coralee's fingers ran about the pews, with their fine mahogany wood, eyes casting towards the stature of the woman knelt upon the floor. Though she were portrayed in prayer, the fearsome nature which possessed her could not be lost. A sword was strapped to her side, and in the stonework the mail of her metal was made obvious.

     "Hi! Can I help you?"

     The voice rang out with the sweetness of curiosity, of an all too human hesitation, and before Coralee could even raise her eyes she felt consumed with a faint desire. Then, as her gaze locked upon the young woman it was magnified threefold. Coralee felt consumed with the beauty of the other.

     She was young, no more than nineteen, with hair of rich chocolate and endless caverns of warm, honeyed brown eyes. There dotted an occasional freckle upon her fair cheek, and though she was of so pale a complexion, vibrant life stirred within her. There was a youth in her being, an innocence that Coralee did not for herself know. Color lived within her cheeks and along the curve of her smile, even upon the tip of her nose, while a sparkle illuminated her gaze like sunlight upon bronze. In this human she found a familiar hum, like a song she'd known once. Instantly, Coralee was smitten.

     "I've come to look at the statue," Coralee explained.

     "This late?" Here the girl smiled brightly, a curious cock of her head and a genuine intrigue. She was sugar sweet and truly curious, and altogether unaware that she was in the presence of a living, breathing demon who could tear her throat out with the points of her teeth. "You must be a real night owl. Most people come in during the day - you can really see the colors from the stained glass when the sun is out." The girl waved her hand in the direction to the stone floor, where Coralee could almost imagine the pattern of light spilling out. She hadn't seen a sunrise in the flesh for well over a century.

      "I'm sure it must be a lovely sight," Coralee answered in response, watching the way that the girl shifted her weight. She was comfortable with strangers, Coralee noted. At ease, relaxed, almost exciteable. Coralee felt herself reminded of a dog, a brown Labrador, runt of the litter with big wide eyes and more energy than any of its brothers or sisters. This girl was like that. Most humans Coralee could find beauty in, like gemstones in a great cavern of fragile shale. This one, so fresh faced, so radiant, was a subject Coralee longed to pull apart, layer by layer as though she were beneath those great microscopes of human invention. Coralee wanted to do that, to see the young woman at the most basic cellular level, peeling her open into biology and psychology. She was intoxicating, even the smell of her like smoke and pine bows and fresh nutmeg dashed with cinnamon. In her life, her human life, Coralee had never tasted true wine, but she was drunk on this woman's scent.

      She could not, of course, voice this to the human with her bright doe eyes, who watched her with unveiled curiosity (and, Coralee hoped to think, some sense of wanting). So instead she smiled sweetly, her fingers aching to reach out and cup her sweet chin, to tilt it back... No. Not yet.

      "I have a schedule which is not suited to leisure time during daylight hours." It was a perfectly agreeable truth, for Coralee could never venture out of doors during the day, not until the sun had begun to settle into the horizon. It was the curse of her affliction, and the reason why she had not seen the sun rise in a great many years, more than a century now. She wondered, privately, to herself, if it still looked as she recalled. Aloud, however, Coralee posed to ask if the girl knew the history of the statue. She, in fact it would seem, did.

      "Most people think the statue is of Saint Joan, which is actually why the cathedral is named for her." The young woman cast her eyes towards the feminine figure, both fearsome and elegant, and her lips turned up. In the magic of her own sight, Coralee almost thought to see the statue smile in return. How curious, she considered, to imagine that the stone might respond. There was magic in it, sure as there was within herself. Yet of the girl, there was only a draw. A familiar pull which brought Coralee stepping closer, her inhumanly black eyes tinged with shades of midnight violet and blue. She wanted to reach out, to wrap her fingers around the young woman's wrist, to feel her nails scrape against her skin. She could make love to her against the statue, kiss away her mortality and feed her own immortal visage. Coralee almost licked her lips to think of it; certainly the woman would be delicious beneath her, sweet and young and supple, innocent as a virgin but for the common devil in her gaze. Yet Coralee restrained herself, she would play this out. She had not been so captured by a creature such as this in a small number of years, and had to be patient.

      "Who was this modeled for if not Joan?" Coralee pressed, returning to a common flowing line of thought.

      "Her name was Gabrielle du Cote. You see that, there?" The puppy look returned, and Coralee nods, eager to see the excitement return. "She's holding a sword there - in her time, she led a charge against a group of English in colonial days who had pressed into French territory." The young woman's eyes sparked brighter yet, dazzling Coralee as she spoke of how the immortalized woman had beat back the invading English alongside a group of the aboriginal people, explaining in great detail all she knew of the woman. She would have listened to her speak for hours, to be in her presence. Humans were so fascinating, this one particularly. The tilt of her head, the smile she summoned easily, the way her tongue struck out to lick her lips... Coralee found her fantastic.

      "What's your name?" she cut into the young woman's speech as she was vaulting deeper into her story. The woman blinked in surprise.

     "Alex." It was spoken hesitatingly at first, then more certainly. "Alex Reagan."

      For a moment, Coralee thought she felt a breeze stirring through the quiet church. Her lips shaped into a smile, curved artfully upwards.

     "Would you like to go to dinner with me, Ms. Reagan?"

     "Now?"

      " _Now_."


	2. The Arms of Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coralee Strand reflects upon her death and her life as she claims one of her one.

     Coralee returned Alex to her dorms that night, left the human all but untouched as she bid her farewell, a small slip of paper tucked within the palm of her hand. She marveled at it as she took her descent from the third floor of a building with poor decor and the scent of sex and illicit substances high in the air. The young woman's handwriting proved to be a wonderful mess of sharp edges that softened into the most graceful of curls, seeming like a paradox in print. All but unconsciously she raised the scrap of haphazardly torn loose leaf to her nostrils, and caught again the girl's sweet perfume, far more intoxicating than anything that a mortal hand could knowingly design. It was natural to her, accumulated upon her person through the life she had lived, as telling as an aura to a seer. Yet, Coralee considered, slithering into the dense cover of shadows that be-speckled the night, there was something which disturbed her in the woman. It was that French term upon her heart, a memory recalled as one is living it - as if she had known the girl before. As if they had met in lives past.

     But Coralee knew such things were not possible. She, by her being as she was, stood in open defiance of all that natural and of the Christian idol's imagined order, and surely as she is a monster, the girl... the girl was human. Coralee had caught the fragrance of her blood and, as she had eased the supple leather of an aged black jacket over her narrow, angular shoulders, felt the pulse of it stir for a moment beneath her touch. Of all mortal frailties Coralee knew her to be in possession -breakable as the birch trees struck by storm. What then, it was that persuaded her to concern, she could not say. She did not know.

     Perplexed, the creature that was Coralee Strand wandered her way through the city streets, avoiding the light of the lamppost that made her brown skin take on an almost opal hue. Snow stirred from where it had been accumulated at the edges of the sidewalks, a stiff breeze blowing against her cheeks, wind on stone. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked, almost worthy of being called eerie under such a dense cover of night, unbroken even by the thin rays of the moon. Coralee drew a breath of fresh winter air and tasted the humanity in the air. Her mouth grew dry with want, with hunger for true satiation. The night that she had spent had done nothing to satisfy her needs, and it blossomed within her.

     The first time Coralee killed, she had been a child still, and mortal.

     The day she died was the day that she had taken her first immortal life.

      _She was no longer young upon that day by the standards of the age, and her face had grown hard with time and a life plagued by pain. The witch's cabin, deep within the forest, seemed an endless shell, an improbability that Coralee witnessed for years that had felt to be millennia. The trees lacked consistency, the cabin itself retained no one form. The only constant was the witch's presence._

      _Like her dark and unpleasant home, the witch herself had no one body, no true state. Coralee had seen her beautiful as a young maiden, and foul and loathsome as her blacked soul, teeth rotted, protruding from her gray gums, her heavily bruised eyes sunken and wicked. Those eyes. They were Coralee's great terror - it had been several years that she would find herself awakening to see them above her head, and many more following that where the gaze did not depart her dreams._

_She felt reminded of the stories of Poe and the vibrant imagery of the vulture eye, so fearsome, so loathesome it could drive a man to kill. Coralee knew that such had earned the character the title of madness, and that such a crown had been bestowed by the writer himself, yet she could sympathize. Coralee recalled the cruel eyes of the witch and her horrifying gaze, and even then she shuddered._

      _She remembered how the creature had howled and screamed when she had pierced her through with the white-hot length of iron that burned her palms as she dug it deeper and deeper. The scent of burning flesh and the sizzling sting of blood which rose in the air, both her own and the witch's. Then, as she was dying, her vile soul smoking into the air, black bile pouring from her mouth, Coralee's curse was uttered into being._

_She would never grow old. She would never catch ill. Time and sickness would leave her pretty face unmarked, and to Death she would serve both as a stranger and a servant, guiding mortal beings into the beyond she could never touch._

      _The damned witch knew the value of a human life and a human end. Coralee had suffered her death and lived through it. Her only consolation was that the witch was surely burning in some hell, if there were such a thing. She told herself to believe in those fires, on dark nights where she too was hoping to convince herself otherwise. Coralee supposed that must be a fine example of what the mortals now called moral ambiguity. Really, she was just as human as them in that._

      Her nose caught the scent of a lonely traveler upon the icy winter breeze, and her mouth grew wet in wanting. The time was come to dine. Unconsciously, her fangs began to descend, she could feel them pressing against her tongue. After more than a century, they still felt foreign as they filled her mouth, until bestial instincts began to cloud against her thoughts, pressing even the memory out.

      The witch's screams echoed in her soul, joined in discord by yet another shrill cry as her teeth sunk into the tender flesh of a mortal being. Blood, crimson and sweet, pulsed into her mouth and hit with a metallic tang upon her tongue. She suckled upon the wound as though a babe to a teat, delivered into a primitive state by her frenzied feeding. The world became hyper real, lights shimmering bright and sounds pressing past her, distinct and yet a blur. Coralee fed, drank deep her fill until the blood ran cold and the heart ceased to beat. She wiped at the edges of her mouth, and looked down to the pallid face of the cooling corpse. Blue eyes gone milky as life left them stared into an unforgiving world, and Coralee's tongue swept over her lips. She raised her fingers and closed the young man's eyelids, crossing his arms over his chest.

 _Sleep is a lesser comfort,_ she thought, _than the cold embrace of death._


	3. Anything for You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laying together, two women contemplate one another and the nature of their relationship. Coralee considers her past, and contemplates the nature of her future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is mostly filler, with a few beginnings of plot points yet to come. Stay on board for future angst, possible smut, and lots of gay vampires.

    Alex wondered, not for the first time, what Coralee was thinking. The woman at present was laying in bed beside her, their legs entwined, a simple white sheet pulled over their bodies. It draped their lower halves, concealing this part of them from the world and leaving the flesh above open, relatively unprotected, as if Alex was ready for the other to seize her body up once more and claim it again as her own. She wouldn't mind if she did.

     The young woman shivered, drawing in closer to her lover, who offered little in the way of warmth. Coralee's skin hardly rivaled the air for its temperature, something to do with her blood she had once explained flippantly, a wave of her hand and the question was whisked away, not to be spoken again.

     She is enchanting, Alex thought as she gazed upon the woman, studying Coralee with her dark hair, her brown skin where Alex's was fair, miles and miles of it stretched and pressed against her own, lean and strong. They made for an interesting couple, night and day in almost every way. Moonlight spilled into the room like water from a flood, illuminating their figures, intwined into each other as if their bodies might forget that they are two different people, like they might lose themselves wholly in one another. Neither of them spoke, the sounds of their breathing the only noises to break the night. Outside, a bird or a bat - or, she thought, perhaps an owl, it was too dark to see- disturbed the darkness for a brief moment, stealing the celestial beams and casting a shadow into the room. Beside her, Coralee stirred, not quite asleep but hardly seeming awake, though Alex knew if she looked over enough, she could see the other woman's eyes wide, gazing into the darkness as though she might divine something from it.

     Coralee knew. She could feel Alex's gaze, inquisitive and burning hot as the young woman's skin did against her own. Alex Reagan was all flame and fire, Coralee thought, and though she is the monster here, sometimes she supposed that the young woman could swallow her whole with how bright she is. She still did not understand the connection between them, the way that the young woman was so capable of drawing her in. She, Coralee, was a creature who had seen the pits of Hell, and Alexandra Reagan looked to her like a taste of heaven, and she tasted even sweeter yet.

     But there was something else, too, something unspoken. Under her skin, Coralee could feel it creeping. There was something about this one, about this girl, this human girl, that made her shudder, made her sigh, that, like a magnet, attached the vampire to her. A sense of familiarity, one Coralee could not explain. One she cannot decipher. It made her afraid, as few things could ever do.

     Coralee thought in that moment that she as falling in love, falling as she laid there beside that girl, her girl. She was afraid of that too. Afraid of what it might mean. Afraid for herself, for her own heart which she has broken over and over again.

     And she was afraid for Alex. Afraid because the girl was in more danger with her than ever she could know. Because the secret that Coralee hid was one that could kill them both. She remembered the last time. She remembered Richard, how she had left him out of necessity when her past had caught up with her. The Cult, the one that damned witch had once led, before she was banished to the woods where a little child and her friend would one day stumble across her. A cult of fire and dragons wanting to burn away the whole world and leave it in their vision of beauty and purity, a huddled black shell in a solar system otherwise unremarkable. That cult, who thought the human race was the cause of their ills and their woes. Who worshipped a creator goddess whose children had turned against her.

     A Cult, who, years after she had thought herself to be free from them, found her in Seattle, with a human husband and a human daughter, led by a sorcerer who had monsters in his soul. Thomas Warren, who had come searching out the bloodlines that had unconsciously led Coralee to the same place, who discovered her when he was searching for the strain, for the son, for the child who could make his nightmarish dream a reality.

    She could not let them find her again, after she ran out and betrayed them, betrayed their trust to save her family. They will not be merciful. Alexandra Reagan could not be as they had, could not be sacrificed in love and in fear. She would not give her up. She would not leave her, lose her because of the sins of her past, the sin of her love. No more of that. Coralee would not run.

     Her tongue flickered over her teeth, shining and white, and deathly sharp, and as she turned into Alex, she scented at the young woman's neck, feeling the reassuring thrum of her pulse, the certainty of the blood that flowed so close to her touch. So close she could steal it before Alex would ever even know. She would do anything to protect the younger woman. Anything.

     "You seem troubled," Alex whispered, spiderweb fractures forming to bridge the silence between them. Her hand came up to comb through Coralee's hair, and the vampire felt soothed by her human's presence. She would need her to go to sleep soon, she knew, would need to slip out and feed in order to resist the temptation that rested like a sacrificial lamb within her bed.

     "It is nothing," Coralee reassured the other woman, lifting her gaze and placing a kiss upon Alex's head, stretching out and shifting her position to cradle the younger woman closer. "Nothing at all. Go to sleep."

     Alex, Coralee had learned, was very perceptible to her commands.

 


	4. The Taste of Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Alex mourns in her arms, empathy drives Coralee to recall the first time she'd felt pain through a vampire's heart.

  Coralee remembers still the first time she felt pain that was not her own.

 

_She had been recently turned, thrown into the human world by the Cult, sent to seek out a man who had possession of a sacred artifact that might lead them to Tiamat, lead them to the arrival of their goddess. There had been a sickness in the air, one that she was immune to as no mortal could be. The streets of the cities then had been filthy in the most hospitable of areas, almost impossible to traverse in the worst, far ghastlier than the modern mind could conceive of. The stench of rotting flesh had been overwhelming, especially so for she who was a vampire and was therefore uniquely attuned to all manners of heighten senses. And therein lay the problem; for it was not only her nose which was sharper or her ears that proved more capable, not simply the fact that her eyes had gained the ability to see through the darkness. Her mind too had evolved, her empathy having grown such that she could sense the emotions of other creatures, be partial to their deepest and most intimate thoughts. Young as she was, she had not yet mastered the subtle art of dampening the siege of emotions when they came at her, strong as a tidal wave. The city had been miserable, a crashing sea of thoughts and of sensations that were foreign to her heart, not native to her mind. They had been at that point indistinct, and so she could not separate one from the other long enough to isolate what it was she was being barraged with. That first night, she’d sought the solitude of a desolate street where sickness had stolen the lives of many within, homes boarded as though it might bar the illness from escaping, the darkness from seeping through and latching onto the world without. These things held no horror for the young woman, Harriette still then. She was immune to death itself, had looked the Devil in the eye as he had given her an immortal kiss._

_The building she had entered had been dark and damp, tainted the scent of decaying wood and the stink of sickness that clung in those days to this unfortunate portion of the city. She'd had to pry the planks from the doorway to enter, a phantom creature slipping into the abode under the cover of a new moon and a thick black cloak of finer quality than anything she once might have dreamed of. If she had been seen, it might have been wondered why such a lady as this would be wandering these streets, lonely and desolate as they were, as ugly as she was beautiful. It might have been wondered, but Harriette was quick, and she was careful, and she had the shadows as her aid; no one would see her._

_Inside of the home there was a musty scent, death and dank things left to sit and swell. The skittering of rats seemed almost at Harriette’s ear, as though there was one such creature climbing its way upon her shoulder. Cobwebs brushed against her face, abandoned by the spiders who sensed the darkness of this being, the inhuman qualities Harriette possessed. Even those creatures, her brethren who feasted as she did upon the blood of those unsuspecting and helpless, could not stand her presence, and fled from her. An icy wind disturbed the dust, sweeping through the crevices where the house's rot had begun to make a more visual manifestation. The cold did not bother Harriette - she was all ice now, her body dead to such mortal complaints. She had ascended beyond that, as those in the Cult had told her, as those who were her kin now reassured her. Her humanity was stripped away._

_Something disturbed Harriette about this place. It had been subtle at first, and yet with each second that she felt more and more certain about the innate wrongness of the world she had stumbled into. Then, as she settled into it, she realized there was a smell which death had finally managed to overcome, as it surely would in all things: the breath of life. It was a weak light that was soon to fade, a heartbeat her ears instinctively found a stuttering threat, faint and yet distinct. Hunger painedHarriette - she had not yet found her fill, had only thought to escape the sounds of the city and the intolerable wall of sensation. Yet now, relatively alone, she thirsted for the blood of this creature. Here in the ancient, decrepit reaches of the city, almost forgotten by time and near to washed out by sickness, she found the faint fire of human blood, and she wanted to consume it._

 

_But there was too the sadness. It was a strange thing, having seem to have sunk into the house, and for a moment she thought that perhaps she was imagining it. But the pain that lived here was too strong to be ignored. As it had settled into the aged timber and the chipped paint, it settled so too into her, rooted itself into her body and Harriette could not help but to hate it. Could not help the way this feeling drew her back, becoming her own and forcing her to relive every awful thing that she had known. She felt the troubles of her life flash before her as they had done when she had been born again. The screaming death of the witch and the torments that the woman had forced her to endure became fresh as though they were reoccurring, old horrors made new again. Last before she felt wholly overwhelmed, before she fled that place, was the sobbing of a young girl, crying out for her as she fell into the darkness for the very first time, her light stolen away._

 

                And yet, Coralee thought, some time into a future she never would have imagined for herself, none of that could compare to what she was feeling with her lover sobbing upon her shoulder. She recalled it with Richard, how his pain had always been hers, how love and its natural tendency towards empathy had multiplied the aching in her bones, had made it impossible to shut off her abilities as she could with all others. With Alex, this was much the same, and it troubled her how much she loved the young woman already, that her hurt could become Coralee's own, that her suffering could plague her as if it were a knife through her heart, brought back to beating for this very purpose.

 

                "That's it, sweet girl. Let it out."

 

                Alex had come just as the sun was going down, and even in her slumber in the coffin below her apartment, she had heard the young woman's approach, had felt her soul calling out to Alex. Sometimes, she wondered to herself if the other woman could feel it too. Richard had told her he could not, but his heart had been wary and his mind skeptical even after the proof had come - she had not expected him to understand all things. But just as she could with him, so could she with Alex feel the bond that connected them. It seemed to be that light which roused her from her sleep, and then the pain of the young woman's heart, and the aching thrum of her thoughts which Coralee so rarely would invade but that overcame her now. Something was wrong, the vampire knew. She threw open the lid of the coffin, groggy and disoriented as any human might be. The sun was still awake, still shining she could tell, though dim and waning as it might be. The vampire cursed, and mounted the stairs, throwing down the shades with little more than a glance. The light would not kill her so quickly as once it would, but it would certainly be her undoing, her ending if she let it linger too long on her skin. She was no longer a newborn, but the consequences if she were left to it were quite the same.

 

                Coralee had barely had the time to make herself decent before Alex was at the door. She bid the young woman welcome, her eyes squinting against the artificial lighting which illuminated her apartment so hideously. The young woman that she found then was in tears as she flung herself into her arms, so unlike the bright and cheery girl she had come to know.

 

                The story had been slow to come from Alex, mumbled words mixed with pained sobs that made Coralee long to destroy the creature which had brought such pain to her person, to her human. But though Death was an enemy she had bested once, she could not defeat him when Champion he was crowned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woah, a new chapter and more plot. We're starting to get into it now - the next few chapters will both explore Coralee's relationship with Alex (and her family, hint hint), as well as driving towards some plot material for later on. This story is turning out to be a lot longer, and much more in depth, than I had originally planned, and thank you all so much for sticking it through.


	5. The Heart's Journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attending her lover's funeral, Coralee discovers something which concerns her greatly.

                She awoke to the last dying rays of the setting sun, and for a moment found herself disoriented until the scraps of Coralee's recollection came floating together upon the surface of her conscience - the plane ride, Alexandra retrieving her from the airport with tears in her eyes, the introductions, the hasty explanation of Coralee's work that would keep her preoccupied through much of the night. Now, alone, she took a moment to truly examine her surroundings. The room she was in smelled distinctly of Alex, firewood and pine trees, cinnamon and cocoa butter, faintly of hemp and of these other natural things. Beneath her was the softness of fur, and when her fingers stirred through the blanket she realized it was genuine. The animal's spirit softly sang up into her finger tips, nothing more than a memory from a forgotten place, long ago, before it disappeared entirely. Her eyes scanned the walls as they'd not done that night, when she truly was tending to some concerns which were her own. They were a comfortable golden color that she supposed must reflect the sunlight beautifully, though the curtains were drawn tight and allowed in not even the barest spark of light. Photographs and posters covered much of the ceiling, and across the room she saw a pride banner that she could imagine an ever younger Alexandra pinning up on the walls the same night she'd sat down with her parents and told them the truth, her truth. Everything in this room had a feeling, emerald threads like the girl's spirit, reaching into the very depths of her soul. Coralee let herself sink into the emotion of her lover's past, until the sound of the door opening disturbed her from these thoughts, this utter relaxation.

 

                “I was wondering when you'd wake.”.

 

                "I told you my work was unforgiving." She smiled, lifting her head to look where Alex stood. She was radiant even in her mourning attire, a black dress that made her a star among the cosmos, that made her skill fairer, somehow, and that proved darker than the weights which had come to line her girl’s eyes. Coralee patted the bed. "Come here. Sit."

 

                "We have to go soon."

 

                Coralee had to be ready soon. Ready in the clothes that she had brought to bid farewell to a woman she had never met, to be at the side of the one that she loved and grant her the arm to cry upon. It was a small blessing that Alex's uncle would be unable to fly in until late, that the funeral was to be held with darkness in the sky.  She did not wish to have to leave her girl to face this on her own.

 

                "I want to see you. Come here, Alex."

 

                _Let me hold you_ , Coralee's eyes silently plead. She was not of the type to beg, but she longed to wrap her human in her arms and keep her safe there. In the end, Alex consented, slipping into the vampire's grasp and letting herself find the haven of her arms, the protective promise that was to be found there. Coralee placed a kiss upon her head, scenting at the woman's locks. The ache she had felt when Alex came to her home had not gone away, and Coralee did not expect it to, but she was better prepared now, took to the hurt better and could give back waves of love and reassurance instead of simply soaking in the young woman's emotion like an unhappy sponge. Alex sighed against her shoulder, her fingers curled into Coralee's shirt.

                "We have to go," she reiterated, and Coralee knew that it was the truth.

 

                "I know." She squeezed Alex's fingers. "I'll be changed in a moment.

                The services were held in a small white church with a back wall made entirely of stone, a charming place cast in a shadow veil on that somber day. Candles guided their way, and within the holy place itself they served as tragic beacons about the woman's casket, lighting her soul to heaven as she heard some ambiguous great aunt say.

 

                "Nani would have hated us all crying," Alex said though there were tears in her eyes, tears she will not allow to fall until later that night, wrapped in the safety of Coralee's arms. "She said tears for the dead were just tears for the living."

 

                Coralee couldn't help but to agree, but she bit her lip on this. Alex deserved to cry, for she had lost a great deal in that woman, this Coralee quite certainly knew.

 

                "She sounds like she was a smart woman, Alexandra. No doubt you gained that from her."

 

                Alex smiled somewhat, a wavering sort of expression that was stained black with her melancholy. Her fingers wrapped into the wide knit of Coralee’s dark gray shawl, pulling herself closer to her lover. Alex was able to ignore the shamed and scandalized looks offered by her relations as they walked, but Coralee could not be oblivious to them, to the glances of the great uncles and distant cousins who stared as though they had committed a great crime. As though Coralee’s presence was unwelcome here, though Alex’s mother and father had accepted her without concern for what she and Alex were to one another, to some a greater sin even than the one which Coralee alone hid beneath her skin. She ached now to flash her teeth, sharp and predatory, a warning that such harsh glances toward her human lover, her beloved, would not be tolerated. But she could not do such a thing, and risk to spoil her poor girl’s mourning. She remained as she was, stoic, a beacon to her lover, and deflected the glances with a sharp expression that had made many a man quiver. Canadian relatives, however, did not seem so affected.

 

                With her hand a gentle fixture upon Alex’s arm, the couple approached the coffin. It was a lovely setting, placed between two tall, gray stone vases in which pure white lilies rose up. The wood of the woman’s final bed had been polished to a beautiful shimmer, so dark that it seemed almost black. Laying within was the woman whom Coralee had until then only seen in photographs or the chambers of her lover’s mind and sorrow-stricken heart. The makeup that had meant to make her look more peacefully alive in death had settled into the lines of her face, emphasizing the many years which she had lived and the struggles and wonders she had both suffered and enjoyed. The woman’s eyes were closed that her girl would not have to endure knowing how the irises go white and milky once life has left them, but Coralee knew they were Alex’s own beneath the pale film of death, forest colors that took her to a home she’d once known, long ago. She squeezed Alex’s arm in a gentle reassurance, and kissed her head gently when, over top her lover’s crown she took notice of the woman’s dressing. It was not so much the lace that framed her neck that the vampire cared to look upon, but what lay nestled between. Placed inside of a simple silver setting, an irregular stone captured the flickering candle lights that mourners loved so well. It seemed to trap that light within its depths, the green stone manifesting wondrous currents of red streaking throughout. Coralee gasped unconsciously, and it was Alex’s turn then to bear the weight and expression of concern.

 

                “Coralee?” Through her wet gaze, sweet Alex found her face.

 

                “It is nothing.” Her hand rose reassuringly, but her eyes wanted nothing more than to track back to that stone. She could not ask Alex of it here, not now, with so many others around, but she knew she must discover the truth of it, even if it meant invading the spaces of Alex’s mind that she had meant always to leave private, delving into the pieces she’s promised to let the woman keep to herself. For if that stone was as she thought, then there was a promise of possibility lingering just above the old woman’s chest.


End file.
